Dr. Matt Knutson, affectionately known as Dr. K to his students, still remembers the day he asked his English professor if game studies was a “joke field”. He had always loved video games. As a five-year-old, he watched his brothers play Mario in the basement. As a college student, the popular game in the dorms was Super Smash Bros. Melee — “my friends and I would keep track of our stats, so we would make these specific profiles that we wouldn’t use in any other context, and that was for the integrity of the stats.”

Dr. K didn’t spend his entire undergrad with a controller in hand. He was also serious about his education. But as he earned his bachelor’s degree in English, his master’s degree in education, and then eventually began to think about his doctorate, he realized that maybe he needed to pivot. 

“I was going to study literature in the American South, and as much as I loved literature of the American South, I wasn’t obsessing over it. If I were going to do my doctorate, it should be something I’m obsessed with. What I was obsessed with was video games.” 

And that’s where it all began. Dr. Knutson got into the visual studies program at UC Irvine (the first public university to have an officially sanctioned esports program), where he wrote his dissertation about the temporality of competitive gaming. “The way that servers regulate time and what is the authoritative place of the server that compels us to play in a way that seems synchronous with other players, even at great distances”, Matt explained. 

After earning his doctorate, Dr. Knutson taught media studies, game studies, esports studies, and streaming media production at the University of Central Oklahoma for the esports media minor. Three years later, he moved to his current position: assistant professor at the University of North Dakota, which has a full esports bachelor’s degree program that Knutson oversees. 

“It was an opportunity to direct the program and take on that kind of leadership in my profession, and an opportunity to mold the curriculum. It’s much more of a responsive process. I am in the summer following my second year there, and I’ll be starting my third year this fall”, Knutson commented.

In an industry where bootcamp or do-it-yourself approaches have long been the norm for those seeking a career in the field, it may seem odd to think about the students who now cycle through Dr. K’s classroom each semester, studying topics like the economics of esports or healthy gaming. 

How does an academic approach compare to just jumping into a career in the industry? What does an esports degree actually include? And as the esports space continues to evolve, is the industry even open to people who come straight from a classroom, the ink on their diploma barely dry?

We spoke to industry insiders to answer all of these questions and more.

Read more — What makes a game timeless?

Academic esports programs are becoming more popular 

For anyone who has questions about esports in higher education institutions, the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) is the place to go, which is owned by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). NACE works to make esports an official varsity sport in colleges, just like football or basketball.

According to NACE, over 300 schools across North America have competitive esports programs. Around 130 universities offer esports scholarships for those programs. It’s harder to find an estimate of how many colleges also provide academic esports options — whether that’s a minor, a concentration, or a full four-year major — but the number is growing. 

“What we’re seeing is the infrastructure that’s being put around collegiate esports teams and programs vastly outweighs the infrastructure that’s around traditional tier two teams,” says Riley Long, Executive Director of NACE. “The structure with esports at the collegiate level is that you’re a full-time student. You’re going to be involved on campus. And despite the perception that players are past their prime, they’re getting better not only in the game but outside of it. When they do get these professional opportunities, they’re prepared. They’re not this 17-year-old still trying to learn the basics of team management and communication skills.”

Dan Marino, Director of Esports at Ball State University in Indiana, agrees. Sure, he says, it’s about the classes and the skills that students learn. But it’s also about creating well-rounded people who are good communicators, who can solve problems, and who are cross-trained in multiple different disciplines that can apply to a variety of tasks and jobs. 

“When you graduate from college, you don’t just leave with the skillset to do your job. You have exposure to other fields. You can pair that esports broadcasting degree with marketing. You can pair it with whatever,” he points out. 

For Marino, his path was “unconventional — I guess you could say that about a lot of people in esports.” Marino’s background is in classical archaeology. Several years ago, he had finished his undergrad and was in a program for Greek and Latin, but wasn’t taking many credits. The free time was convenient because Overwatch had just come out, and he was determined to beat a friend.

“I started to coach low-ranked players individually for free. I enjoyed the strategic element of playing. And that snowballed into coaching teams, which snowballed into entering tournaments and competitions. And I found there was no competition, tournament, or league that I loved for me to enter my team, so I instead made my own.”

Marino and his friends started an organization called Owlet Esports that provided opportunities for beginners who wanted to get started with playing, coaching, broadcasting, production, and administration. He ran that organization for a couple of years, leading a team of 25 staff and a community of 2,000 individuals, before coming to the realization: “I don’t know if archaeology is ever going to pay the bills.”

It was a turning point, he says — one that came right around the time schools began introducing esports programs. “I was like, well, I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing for free for the past two years.”

Marino landed a job at the College of Saint Rose in upstate New York, where he developed and launched the esports program. He coached there for two years before moving to Ball State in 2020. Now, he directs all things esports at Ball State, including the 52 students involved in varsity esports and the 500+ students involved in the esports club on campus. 

“As the manager of our esports center, I oversee the official program. This includes our varsity teams that compete, as well as our separate student production crew that broadcasts the matches. The production crew is tied to our academic program, but any student can volunteer and get experience”, he explained.

In Marino’s case, however, he doesn’t teach esports classes himself. Ball State’s academic offering is a Sports Production – Esports Concentration degree housed in the Department of Media. So while students do take classes that are specific to esports — like Sports and Electronic Media, or Digital Sports Seminar — all of these classes are taught by faculty members in the media department. But suppose something new is happening in the industry, like a recently released esports production software. In that case, Marino says he would have no issues bringing it up with the Department of Media to implement that development into the curriculum.

“I’m not exactly the one pulling the strings on that degree or that concentration, but there’s a lot of influence with what we do day-to-day with the esports program and how we connect to the larger industry that influences what’s taught", Dan commented.

An esports class syllabus

Since Ball State’s academic esports track is part of its Sports Production degree, the overall degree is part of the Department of Media. But this isn’t the case for every school with an esports degree. At the University of North Dakota, “it kind of grew out of kinesiology,” Dr. Knutson says. “When the administration said to the departments, ‘Hey, we’re going to do esports, who wants to do esports?’ and kinesiology put up their hand, it was a natural outgrowth of — hey, we do coaching, we can do esports coaching. And my colleagues created the first iteration of this program.”

For a developing industry like esports — one that overlaps many other fields, including tech, media/digital communication, and sports — it can be tricky to know where exactly to categorize this area of study. Other examples of departments where you might find an esports degree include business, education, or even language. 

The large majority of higher education esports programs currently available all appear to have some sort of specialization or concentration (or at least the option for one) to help narrow a student’s studies. Common choices include broadcasting, administration, or business. While a student’s concentration will affect the classes they take, the course list for an esports-related major might include anything from History of Gaming to Esports Sponsorship and Funding to Introduction to Writing for Games. 

Professors and other faculty members take their curriculum planning duties seriously, just as they would for any other higher education classes. 

“What we have set out to do is to make sure the core skills students are learning in the degree program are taught with an eye toward their career aspirations,” Dr. Knutson explains, “and to the set of critical thinking skills and digital literacy that will enable students to succeed in whatever endeavor they find themselves in after college.”

Getting the job: College vs. bootcamp  

Once a student has crossed the stage and gotten their diploma on graduation day, what happens next? Is that piece of paper going to magically open doors in the industry?

According to Riley Long, who has 13 years of experience in both the collegiate and pro esports spaces, it doesn’t matter whether you have a degree if you don’t have hands-on experience.

“It all comes down to, on that campus, what opportunities are there for students to get hands-on experiences of being involved with a formally supported program and being allowed to apply those skills? Whether you’re an esports broadcast major or a broadcast major, if you have the opportunity to apply those skills with your esports program and help run your stream, those are the types of skills that are going to be transferable to a future career, whether they’re in esports or outside of esports”, Long commented.

The good news is that most higher education esports programs seem to seek to provide their students with opportunities to network and grow their skills — even if these chances aren’t formal, buttoned-up events. 

When the Ball State varsity team is traveling for a tournament event, Dan Marino always tries to bring the production students along. Sometimes, they’re only able to shadow. But sometimes, they end up being the only people on-site who are capable of running production, thrusting them into a much larger role where they can get valuable on-the-job training. 

“They’re able to get the exposure to those different working environments, ideas, and workflows. So while it might not be a ‘proper’ internship, they still get that experience of working with other groups and venues to buttress anything they’re learning on campus”, Marino explained.

Since Ball State’s first graduating class in 2021, nearly 200 students have graduated from the esports program. One alumnus is now an anchor on the Fort Wayne, Indiana, news station. Another went on to do video editing for the Pacers and their esports team. For every 20-25 students that graduate, Marino estimates, 1-2 end up working in a dedicated esports field. But all of them have the exposure and the skills they need to step into any type of live broadcast confidently. If students land in esports specifically, that’s great. If not, they’re equally prepared to do just about anything within the larger field of production and media.

“That’s the great thing about getting these hands-on experiences: Our industry is a very tech-forward industry,” Riley Long points out. “So a lot of the things that our students get to work on are cutting-edge stuff. Understanding the ins and outs of building a PC or just general technology skills equips people to be versatile in the workforce, whether you’re in esports or not. We’re seeing a lot of students funnel into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-adjacent careers. And oftentimes, we’re seeing kids getting excellent jobs right out of college and finding success.”

Ultimately, while it seems that experience does take a slight edge over education in this field, the “correct” choice between pursuing an academic degree or taking the DIY route is individual and depends on each student’s personal goals. While college students will spend more time in school and spend more money, they’ll get a strong career foundation that will give them the possibility to branch out beyond esports. 

People who take a bootcamp-style approach will finish more quickly and have more potential for immediate opportunity afterward. A boot camp could also be a good way to feel out whether they’re genuinely interested in the field, or to serve as a complement to an academic program. 

“It’s not currently the standard within the esports ecosystem that you need a bachelor’s degree in esports to get a job,” states Dr. Knutson. “And also, esports is a moving target. I want to be aware of a point in the future where it may very well be the strong preference of employers in esports to have these kinds of bachelor’s degrees. We want to support [students] in whichever pathway they’re pursuing.”

Read more — Team Liquid hits the road

A gimmick or a dream idea?

For many people in the esports industry, the idea of sitting in a classroom reading about esports in a textbook is unfamiliar — and perhaps almost offensive. Working hard to make your way in the industry is a point of pride for many people, leading to a stigma around the idea of getting an esports degree.

“Esports degrees feel like a gimmick to me,” commented one Reddit user. Another user commented on the same thread, “Your esports degree will go great next to your sister’s cosmetology certificate!”

But esports is a dynamic, quickly changing industry. As it continues to evolve, will the way that people learn, gain experience, and get started in the space change, too? 

Dan Marino understands why there might be misconceptions or stigmas about an esports or gaming degree. The industry as a whole is still finding its footing, he points out. And yes, he understands the perspective that the people who are “qualified” to teach esports classes are still in the field. Is it premature to already be offering full esports degrees?

“Having a bigger exposure to different ideas and disciplines on a college campus does prepare you to be effective in whatever industry someone might take on. It can’t just be endemic. And when you graduate, you might be able to help stabilize this industry that’s been all over the place. You have to make your opportunities. You really kind of have to grind it out. But the dream idea is that it won’t be like that forever", Marino said.

For those who do choose the higher education route, the key is to go in with the right expectations.

“Sometimes people come to learn about an esports program, and they say, ‘You’re just going to teach students to play video games. That’s the degree,” Dr. Knutson says. “You don’t need to take a college class to be the best League of Legends player in the world. I can’t teach anyone to be Faker. That’s not what I can do. And it’s not what a degree program can do. 

“What college can do is give you a set of critical thinking skills, digital media skills, and a broader perspective than what you had going into the program so that you bring the right insights and a breadth and depth of knowledge when you’re getting your foot in the door of the industry.”

And that’s what ensures esports is more than just the current trend — it’s a lasting, sustainable future. 

‍